


Try a Little Tenderness

by larvae



Category: 3 From Hell, House of 1000 Corpses (Movies), The Devil's Rejects (Movies)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Behavior, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Missing Scene, Slurs, Step-Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-30 06:16:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20809904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larvae/pseuds/larvae
Summary: Oh she may be wearyThem young girls they do get weariedWearing that same old shaggy dress, yeah, yeahBut when she gets wearyTry a little tendernessQuick little re-write of Otis and Baby's conversation in Mexico.





	Try a Little Tenderness

What’s a step below a one horse town? A town that has to borrow its horse from the next town over? What about below that? A town that the next town over won’t loan its horse to for fear of never getting it back, or else getting it back having seen shit it should never have had to live through?

That’s exactly the kind of border town they’d wound up in, in its singular Spanish Colonial style hole in the wall bed and breakfast which promised warm beer and cold women. By some wayward miracle their room had running water. Baby had called dibs on the shower as soon as they’d set their bags down, and Foxy had called it afterwards. Otis had lain flat on the floor and told both of them that it’d be hot lead for dinner for whoever woke him up.

Dusk fell across the desert and he was still asleep, his head propped up slightly against the wall. Dead to the world.

Baby crawled over to him from her perch by the window and sat watching him on all fours, her sun dress pooled around her knees. He’d aged, and gained weight. His hair had always been white but it seemed more fragile on him now.

They hadn’t acknowledged coming together in the same way that they hadn’t acknowledged being apart. But that Baby had lived in Otis’ absence for ten years was as true as the fact that she now lived in his presence, watching him breathe peacefully, sprawled out on a dingy tiled floor.

Before their trial there had never been a life without Otis. Baby could take care of her damn self but Otis had always been there to take care of it, whatever “it” was. Pigs near the property. Dogs on the loose. Doctor getting hungry again, down beneath the earth. When Grandpa Hugo died Otis and RJ dug his grave from the early morning to the late afternoon with Baby holding Mama as she cried, first in great, heaving, primadonna sobs then quietly in sustained, sincere, whimpers. When the pigs had swarmed that same spring the burial mound had still been fresh.

She crawled to close the distance between them and swung her leg over his, settling into his lap. The feeling was familiar. His hip bones still dug hard into the inside of her thighs. His face twitched and he muttered something in his sleep.

“Otis.”

He scrunched his nose in annoyance, his bushy brows furrowing. 

“Otis,” Baby insisted, rocking back against his thighs and bracing her hands on his shoulders. She watched him squeeze his eyes shut tighter.

“Otis!” she said, losing patience and yanking his beard down hard enough to bounce his head against the baseboard.

“Ow, what!! What the fuck!!”

“Fuck me.”

His eyes softened and his brows lowered. She hated it. It felt like pity.

“What, now?” he raised his arms to rest his hands against her legs. His eyes were still bleary, either from sleep or occipital lobe damage.

“No, next week if you think you can pencil me into your schedule. Of course now, you stupid fuck!”

He snorted and reached a hand back to smack her ass, “What the hell kinda sweet talk is that?”

Baby put her hands over his and brought them to her chest. His familiar callouses were gone. She couldn’t recognize these soft, aged hands.

“C’mon,” she whined, grinding her ass down into his lap, “C’mon fuck me. I want it.”

“Foxy’s in th-“

“If I wanted Foxy to fuck me I’d pull him out of the shower myself,” she snapped. She moved his left hand down her side and brought it down to cup her ass. Otis, finally regaining control over the limbs she’d been puppeteering, slid his right hand out of her grip and over her chest. His thumb and index finger briefly framed her throat and she felt him slide his thumb up the length of her carotid artery. She could feel the pulse in his thumb, in his princeps pollicis artery. She could remember him teaching her that, then pointing out the proximal, middle, and distal phalanx on the poor bastard whose hand he’d degloved moments earlier. He moved his hand further to cup her jaw.

“Come on,” she leaned into his touch, “Fuck me. I want it like the first time.”

He scoffed, the snort of laughter pushing his chin into his neck, and pushed himself up onto his elbows. Baby dug her knees into the floor lest he tried to buck her off.

“Th-“ The sound died in Otis’ throat as he searched her face and found no concession, “Kid that was… thirty years ago if you wanna talk expectation managem-“

She kissed him. Or moreso pressed his lips shut with her own. His beard scratched her face and she could remember how when she'd kissed him the first time he'd been without it. How he'd been without it for most of their kisses. How she’d told him not to grow it out and how she hadn’t ever gotten all the way used to it. After a moment he kissed back. Still tender. Still soft. Still not what she wanted.

Baby sat back on his thighs and rolled her eyes. She huffed to blow a stray curl from her face.

“What’s this about, kid?”

“My limp dick big brother got all the fuck fucked out of him in prison.”

“You better watch your fucking mouth.” Again with the aggressive finger in her face. She couldn’t think of a gesture less threatening or of one he was more fond of.

“Or you’re gonna put what in it, old man?”

“Hey maybe I should’ve left you to rot in Hobby and those dykey guards could’ve kept ya happy.” Baby nuzzled her chin against his hand until he opened his palm to cup it.

“…Otis?”

“Mh?”

“You ever think about what the point is?”

“…of?”

“Of this. Of any of it.”

A moment of silence stretched out between them. Baby could hear the shower turn off and the insects sing through the night.

“You thinkin’ about Cutter?” he asked her.

“Yeah,” she admitted, bringing her chin down towards her chest.

“Well,” Otis bit his lip and for a moment looked uncharacteristically pensive, as if his train of thought had brought him squarely up to his own age, “he did more livin’ than most people. Got a lot done with the time he had.”

“But what happens to us now? What comes next?”

“Well,” he sucked his teeth, “I still haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“Shit,” she leaned forward to rest against his chest, tucking her head under his chin, “It doesn’t feel like there’s anything far ahead.”

“Well, it’s always been the two of us up against the world.”

“…yeah.”

“So,” Baby felt him sigh into her hair, “so it’s gonna stay the two of us”

Baby heard soft footsteps behind her and Foxy’s voice answer confidently, “The three of us.”

“Yeah,” she said, pressing her face into Otis’ chest, “the two of us.”

“…the three of us.”

“Just you and me, kid, the gruesome twosome.”

“Oh you two are a special brand of asshole, you know that?’

**Author's Note:**

> The William P. Hobby Unit (HB) is a prison for women in unincorporated Falls County, Texas, United States. The prison was established in November 1989. The Hobby Prison Unit stands at 742 FM 712, Marlin, Texas 76661.
> 
> P.S. Having since rewatched this I realized how off the details in this were but in my defense I wrote this in a fugue state the day after I saw it in theaters with no copy available to me.


End file.
